Excerpt: 'The Skinny: On Losing Weight Without Being Hungry'

May 18, 2009

Dr. Louis Aronne, founder and director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Program at New York/Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center has a new weight loss guide.

In his new book, "The Skinny," Aronne shares his secrets to losing weight without being hungry and tackles the challenge of how to keep the weight off. Free of fads, "The Skinny" offers healthy methods for controlling cravings and eating smart without counting calories.

"The Skinny" gives extensive advice on how to achieve healthy, long-term weight loss and includes recipes and tips for eating out, along with an easy-to-stick-to exercise guide.

Read an excerpt from the book below and then head to the "GMA" Library for some more good reads.

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The Solution for Lasting Weight Loss

Some surveys indicate that roughly 80 percent of people who lose weight regain most or all of it within a year. I want you to fall into the other category, the category of people we rarely hear about. I want you to be a part of the 20 percent who keep it off. To stay successful, use this plan for maintaining your weight loss.

Your first step in achieving lasting weight loss lies in determining when to stop losing and start maintaining. Many dieters pick an arbitrary finish line.They want to get down to a specific clothing size or see a specific number on the scale, but you just can't bully your body into losing the perfect amount of weight. Will you shed enough fat to fit into a size four, six, or eight, or into the jeans you wore in high school? I can't make that promise. At some point, as you lose weight, your body will fight back. It will defend your weight, and if you try to battle your body at this point, you'll end up feeling extremely hungry despite choosing the most filling foods and plateau anyway because your metabolism will slow.Trying to fight against this biology is like trying to push a car uphill. You may manage to go a few steps, but, eventually, biology wins, and your weight-like that car-goes in the other direction.

I know this isn't what you want to hear, and I wish I could tell you the magical secret that would allow you to get your body to that pre-determined perfect place, but I just can't. I'd much rather be honest, and I'd much rather give you the tools to help you get to a healthy weight and then stay there. If you have a lot of weight to lose and can't consider some of the options such as medication and surgery discussed in chapter 10, I'd rather you lost a little weight and kept it off than lost a lot of weight and then gained a lot of it right back.

For this reason, I'd like you to forget about any preconceived notions you once had about your maintenance weight. Forget about that coveted number or clothing size. Instead, focus on your behavior on successfully following this book's nutrition and lifestyle principles and let your maintenance weight find you.To do so, follow the Phase 1 menus and exercise as directed in Part 2 for as long as you can. Once you feel deprived or bored with the Phase 1 choices, slowly transition to Phase 2 eating as described in chapter 3. Increase exercise as directed in chap-ter 9. Eventually, no matter how closely you monitor your eating or how diligently you exercise, you'll stop losing weight. This is your mainte-nance weight.